What’s incredible about the Gurkhas is that they’ve enjoyed near universal support for their cause across the political spectrum – except for the Cabinet, of course. Putting right the travesty – and backdating it – is incredible news, and this footage on the BBC is, I think, is Nick Clegg’s finest moment – made all the more delicious for the thorough upstaging of David Cameron. Oh dear oh dear, there will be trouble ‘t mill.
In fact, compare and contrast – Brown’s finest moments are when disaster strikes. Nick’s finest moment has been celebrating something really good. I’d like to remember this as the one brief shining moment in 2009 where something good happened in politics. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be cheered up by a political story in the news.
In fact, it seems so obvious that this is ‘a good thing’ that you can’t quite believe Brown handed such a gift to the opposition – pointlessly opposing something universally popular seemingly without any possible justification or reason. I’ve been searching for an answer as to why all day, not really able to understand until, suddenly, it hit me:
This is like the manager that doesn’t want to employ the ‘black guy’ – not because he’s racist, he’s definitely not racist, oh no – but the customers, well, they might not like it. What can you do? It’s nothing personal.
See, it’s the Nationalism, stupid. British Jobs for British Workers, and all that. Brown and Labour in general is desperate to avoid handing the BNP – it always comes back to the BNP these days – any soft targets to kick. They’ve already changed so much of their strategy to tackle the threat from the BNP, why should we be surprised that this process continues?
Specifically one can imagine BNP leaflets being shoved through the door announcing, “see! they can find the money for these furriners but nuffin for the indiginous whites!”
What’s baffling is that while this particular reason doesn’t make much sense, the only other explanations are too horrible to contemplate: Brown deliberately wanted his Government to be seen as mean to foreigners, directly competing with the BNP with dogwhistle racism.
Or worse still, he will eventually begin accusing the Lib Dems and the Tories of ‘putting foreigners first in a time of national crisis’ himself. That could get very nasty indeed.
Anyone willing to defend the Government’s position on this? Care to put forward some other reason that I might have overlooked?
